Thicker Than Blood - the Complete Andrew Z. Thomas Trilogy - Blake Crouch [88]
The key to the dead bolt also unlocked the room that had been my prison. It appeared just as I had left it, meager and confining. Though the window in the back wall was still barred, I reached through and tested the latch. Then I opened the dresser drawers, which were empty, and peeked under the bed. There was nothing significant in this room, a holding cell, nothing more.
I walked back into the hallway and stopped at Orson’s door. Touching the doorknob, I hesitated. You’re alone. Fuck the fear. I stepped inside.
The freezer chest stood unlocked beneath the window. I opened it. Empty. I locked the window. Now he’d have to break glass to get inside.
Setting the candle atop Orson’s pine dresser, I started opening drawers. The top three were empty, but when I tried the last, it was stuck. Yanking on it again, it still wouldn’t open, so I kicked it. The wood squeaked, and jerking back once more on the handles, I pulled the drawer entirely out of the dresser and onto the floor.
Thank you, God.
I inventoried five videotapes, a stack of manila folders, a box of microcassettes, and three Mead notebooks. Bringing the candle down onto the floor, I held it over the drawer and removed a videotape. I read the label on the tape, written in his straight, microscopic penmanship: "Jessica Horowitz: 5-29-92; Jim Yountz: 6-20-92; Trevor Kistling: 6-25-92; Mandy Sommers: 7-06-92" — all on one label, and there were five tapes here, not counting the three I’d destroyed in Woodside. I noticed that each tape, without exception, had been recorded during the months of May, June, July, and August: his hunting season.
The microcassettes were labeled only by date, and I assumed they contained the same self-absorbed drivel I’d heard Orson dictating in his bed in Vermont. Lifting a green wire-bound notebook from the drawer, I lay on my stomach and thumbed through the pages by candlelight. This one was full of poetry, every page, front and back. I read a short untitled poem aloud to explore the rhythm of his verse, his direct, protean voice flowing through mine:
You are always with me
When I lie in bed in the dark
When I walk a crowded street
When I watch the night sky
When I shit
When I laugh
When I possess them, as you possess me
You are omnipotent, but you aren’t my god
You raised me but did not make me
You are gas but not the fire
I am deeper
I am incalculable
I am
The two other notebooks contained short stories, brainstorms, and the fragmented thoughts of someone aspiring to write. Orson wouldn’t make it as a writer. He could turn a nifty phrase, but there was a general ungainliness and ambiguity in his verse and prose, which would’ve doomed him to fail had he ever tried to publish. I wanted to tell him this, and that his poetry was prosaic. I wanted him to watch me burn the notebooks and the tapes.
There were three manila folders. The first, titled "In the News," was filled with newspaper clippings regarding the discovery or lack thereof of Orson’s victims. The second folder, "Memory Lane," bulged with photographs, and I studied all of them. I saw myself in half a dozen pictures, but they didn’t unglue me like I’d feared, even the one of me staring down at Jeff seconds after his execution.
A handful of photographs featured Luther doing grisly things to people. In one photo, he stared truculently into the camera with dead, soulless eyes, fingernail marks running down each cheek.
In the third folder, "The Minutes," Orson had chronicled six summers of killing on unlined loose-leaf paper. Flipping to the end, I skimmed the synopsis of our time together, until I reached the final paragraph:
Wyoming: June 2, 1996
He hasn’t been as easy or productive as Luther, but I see in him potential that transcends my other pupil. So I’m letting him go. Another week here and he’d lose his mind, when what I want is for his rage